Cartels' Grip Part 3: When cartels overrun a town

Photographs and other items on a bed next to a bullet-riddled wall in an apartment in Cuernavaca, Mexico after alleged drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran-Leyva and three members of his cartel were killed during a shootout with Mexican Navy Special Forces.

Photographs and other items on a bed next to a bullet-riddled wall in an apartment in Cuernavaca, Mexico after alleged drug cartel chief Arturo Beltran-Leyva and three members of his cartel were killed during a shootout with Mexican Navy Special Forces. (/ Antonio Sierra)

About this series

This four-part series, focused on a boy born in San Diego accused at age 14 of heinous crimes for a drug cartel, illustrates the expanse of a drug trade that ensnares adults and children on both sides of the border.Union-Tribune reporters Morgan Lee and Janine Zúñiga have written the stories based on public records and interviews in Mexico and the United States.

Mexican marines had cornered the “Boss of Bosses” in a condominium high-rise in Cuernavaca, a sunny retreat an hour’s drive from the nation’s capital.

Special forces quietly evacuated the towers and cordoned off traffic.

The clatter of assault rifles rang out for two hours until Arturo Beltrán Leyva — the leader of a fearsome band of drug-trafficking brothers — was shot dead inside a bloodied, bullet-pocked room on Dec. 16, 2009.

The government immediately claimed a monumental victory in a military offensive that President Felipe Calderón launched against top traffickers when he took office three years earlier.

Within days of Beltrán Leyva’s death, classified U.S. Embassy cables warned of the bloodshed to come in Cuernavaca, where corrupt politicians and police had allowed organized crime to flourish.

Traffickers struck swiftly.

After a state funeral for a Mexican marine slain in the firefight, cartel allies tracked down his family and killed his mother, sister, brother and aunt.

Within months, the main highway that winds through Cuernavaca, as it connects the central highlands of the nation’s capital to the sea at Acapulco, became a showcase of bodies strung up in the night. Crudely stenciled banners — hung on bridges, from trees and in schoolyards — challenged all who stood in the way.

Cartel showdown

Two offshoots of Beltrán Leyva’s organization declared a showdown in expletive-laced banners.

“The Boss of Bosses! He is gone. We loved him, but life goes on and the war is going to be hard,” one message announced.

At stake was control of a crucial smuggling route.

/ AP Photo/Mexico Attorney General’s Office

Arturo Beltran Leyva

Arturo Beltran Leyva (/ AP Photo/Mexico Attorney General’s Office)

The ensuing carnage quickly upended Cuernavaca, a state capital that long provided a festive escape from big-city life and attracted visitors to museums and restaurants. Kidnapping victims turned up dead on roadsides, often with signs they were tortured before being shot or asphyxiated. Small businesses — a bar, a car sales lot, an auto repair garage — were burned down in brazen acts of extortion.

Two bodies were strung from an underpass on the main highway. Days later, six youths were abducted from a soccer field in a neighborhood outside Cuernavaca. Their bodies were found piled on the side of the main highway, with plastic bags over their heads and their hands and legs tied.

On a Friday night after payday, when crowds of revelers were typical, the streets were deserted because of a widely circulated email foretelling violence and calling for a curfew. Authorities said the message was a hoax and stepped up patrols, but it didn’t matter.

“It was a self-imposed curfew by the people of Morelos state,” said Úrsula Oswald, an analyst of social vulnerabilities at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Cuernavaca. “With this campaign, terror took hold.”

Soldiers patrolled the streets but offered little protection to residents. The drug traffickers had taken over daily life.

Four decapitated bodies were found strung from the the Tabachines bridge in Cuernavaca in August 2010 amid a local turf war between rival drug gangs. San Diego native Edgar Jimenez Lugo, 14, is being investigated for his possible participation in the killings.

Four decapitated bodies were found strung from the the Tabachines bridge in Cuernavaca in August 2010 amid a local turf war between rival drug gangs. San Diego native Edgar Jimenez Lugo, 14, is being investigated for his possible participation in the killings. (/ Morgan Lee)

A young recruit

/ Morgan Lee

Edgar’s father, David Antonio Jimenez Solis, outside his home in Tejalpa, Mexico, in February.

Around this time, a pudgy, well-dressed man in a pickup with tinted windows started showing up at Edgar’s house to visit with his dad, David Antonio Jimenez Solis. They drank at the kitchen table.

Two family members said David eventually entrusted his son’s care for extended periods to Julio Radilla Hernandez, who went by “El Negro.”

/ AP Photo/Marco Ugarte

Julio de Jesus Radilla Hernandez, aka “El Negro” is accused of ordering the murder of Juan Francisco Sicilia, son of Mexican poet Javier Sicilia and six other people.

Julio de Jesus Radilla Hernandez, aka “El Negro” is accused of ordering the murder of Juan Francisco Sicilia, son of Mexican poet Javier Sicilia and six other people. (/ AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

Edgar’s sister Elizabeth Jimenez Lugo, an outgoing teenager, also hung out with Radilla, who was in his early 30s.

Soon, Edgar came home with money in his pockets.

He bought jeans, hailed taxis, and treated friends to chips and sodas at the video arcade. He slipped cash to his older sisters as a small, increasingly reliable favor.

Over time, relatives wondered why the boy they affectionately called “Ponchis” was rarely around. They confronted David.

“He acted surprised,” said Edgar’s aunt Sally Olivia Jimenez Solis. David said his friend Radilla “was taking care of Edgar, and to mind our own business.”

Army intelligence reports painted a disturbing portrait of Radilla. They called him a vicious killer for the newly formed South Pacific Cartel, working under the last of the Beltrán Leyva brothers not killed or captured.

Radilla, who sported an eagle tattoo on his chest, allegedly led a group of youthful assassins and maintained a network of lookouts and corrupt police officers to avoid capture.

Asked about his contact with Radilla, David insisted he never knew “El Negro.” He only saw him around town.

“He was just some guy. He’s from here,” David said. “He hired people. He said he was helping them.”

Asked why Edgar didn’t always come home at night, David said, “He told me that he was staying over at a friend’s house. Sometimes it was the truth.”

By the time other family members asked Edgar about his gang ties, it was too late.

“He said he had no way out,” one relative said. “He told us how sorry he was to be mixed up in this, and how it was his fault that this was happening to us.”

Sally Olivia said it became obvious her hometown of Tejalpa was harboring drug gangs.

A few blocks separated the city’s central plaza — a site for dances and teen rock concerts — from a gang safehouse.

“I feel like the traffickers started to look for the exact place where they could take away innocent people, where they could do what they pleased,” Sally Olivia said. “It was an innocent, naive town.”

Rumored child assassin

As the gangs’ campaign of intimidation and bravado spilled onto the Internet, army investigators took notice of certain images.

In one, a boy in a baseball cap crouched in the foreground, clutching a high-powered rifle.

In an anonymously posted video, a gagged and bound man dangled from a ceiling by his wrists. Men took turns thrashing his torso. Amid laughter and mugging for cellphone cameras, a boy’s high-pitched voice could be heard and a diminutive figure appeared.

“Ponchis would like to have a turn,” one man said.

Word spread of a child assassin.

On Cuernavaca’s streets, more gruesome scenes were playing out.

Last year, on a Sunday morning in August, four mutilated bodies were discovered hanging from a highway bridge. Severed heads and genitals were found nearby with a threat signed by the South Pacific Cartel.

Authorities later linked the killings to Edgar.

The victims, ages 20 to 24, were a student, a cook at a university, a gas station attendant and a small-business owner. Little more is known about them.

One night in late October, soldiers came banging on the door to Edgar’s family compound looking for him and his sister Elizabeth.

The two weren’t home, but troops arrested their cousin David Jose Mario Jimenez on organized crime charges that he denies. His arrest put Edgar and Elizabeth on notice that authorities were closing in, and they made plans to leave town.

International spotlight

Edgar and Elizabeth passed through security at Cuernavaca’s airport, but soldiers captured them 10 minutes before takeoff to Tijuana.

Edgar’s arrest set off an international spectacle. The army thrust him in front of reporters and cameras at the federal prosecutor’s office.

“Who gave you orders?”

“El Negro.”

“Are you scared?”

“No.”

“Do you know what’s going to happen, that they’re going to take you and put you on trial for federal crimes?”

The boy nodded yes.

With a swollen lip and eye, Edgar made a muddled confession that he was forced to behead four people while under the influence of marijuana.

He said that he and his sister were trying to get to their mother in San Diego.

Elizabeth was turned over to federal authorities on accusations she participated in kidnappings while in a romantic relationship with gang leader Radilla. Sister Lina Ericka Jimenez Lugo, who drove her siblings to the airport, also was arrested.

Edgar is in a juvenile detention center outside Cuernavaca where his attorneys declined to comment on the case for his own protection. Because he was 14 at the time of the killings, he faces a maximum sentence of three years.

“The government wanted to show him off like a trophy,” said Javier Valdez Cárdenas, a Mexican journalist and author of a recent book on the experiences of children affected by drug trafficking. “They presented him as the grand narco, the kingpin, ultra-dangerous.”

Peace movement

Edgar’s case capped a year of high-profile arrests that further weakened what was left of the Beltrán Leyva organization.

In recent months, violence has reached new thresholds throughout Mexico. Traffickers shot and killed U.S. immigration agent Jaime Zapata on a highway in the central state of San Luis Potosí. Mass graves, some containing hundreds of bodies, have been unearthed across Mexico’s northern border region, evidence of fighting among rival cartels that also extort and kill passing migrants. More than 400 bodies were found in Tamaulipas and Durango states.

In March, a late-night burst of bloodshed in Cuernavaca prompted a weary nation to vent its pent-up grief and disgust. Seven asphyxiated bodies were found in a car on the side of a road, among them the son of prominent poet Javier Sicilia.

The killings allegedly stem from a confrontation between the victims and the employees of a nightclub over a stolen cellphone and camera. The club’s management called in a drug gang to silence the group, Sicilia’s attorney said.

Sicilia reacted to the senseless deaths by publicly challenging the complacency of politicians and heaping shame on criminals.

“Nobody dares get angry with drug traffickers,” said Valdez Cárdenas, describing how Sicilia emboldened others fed up with the violence. “We have to get outraged.”

At sit-ins and marches, a movement was born that has focused on what it considers the government’s failure to protect its citizens from the drug war or bring even a small fraction of criminals to justice. Participants have advocated fighting cartels and corruption by relying less on the military, which they link to escalating violence, and more on undermining smuggling profits.

Mexico’s attorney general offered a $900,000 reward for the man accused of ordering the killings — Radilla, also suspected of luring Edgar into gang life.

For Sicilia, the only explanation for Radilla’s ability to elude federal forces for months was local police corruption.

“It’s curious, everyone knew where he was,” Sicilia told The San Diego Union-Tribune. “Everyone talked about him: ‘He ate tacos over here. He lived over there.’ And the only ones who didn’t know were the police and the army.”

As pressure mounted in the manhunt, Radilla’s own cartel disavowed him. “The Beltrán Leyva firm separates itself from ‘El Negro.’ He does not belong,” proclaimed a banner in Cuernavaca.

In May, the 34-year-old Radilla was found in the Gulf Coast state of Veracruz and arrested after a brief firefight. A judge ordered Radilla’s continued detention as organized crime investigators build their case.

Those closest to Edgar still refuse to believe the boy became a perpetrator of the violence that enveloped their hometown.

“A father’s heart tells you when your children aren’t well, when they’re sick,” said Edgar’s father, David. “And this, what they say about him? No. He didn’t do it.”